Pasco Tops U.S. In Job Growth

By KEVIN WIATROWSKI kwiatrowski@tampatrib.com
Tampa Tribune
Published: Jan 12, 2006

Pasco County led the nation's largest counties in job creation in the spring of 2005, according to figures released Wednesday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Between April 1 and June 30, Pasco added 8,500 jobs, an increase of 9.5 percent over the same period in 2004. That was a rate of job growth 5 1/2 times the average for the nation's 322 largest counties.

Much of the reported job growth came from the county's housing boom.

Driven by a population explosion that has made Pasco one of the nation's fastest-growing counties, construction jobs grew by 25 percent, followed by real estate (17 percent) and finance (11 percent).

The service sector, which accounts for 80 percent of Pasco jobs, grew about 10 percent.

Elsewhere in the Tampa metro area, Hillsborough County jobs grew by 3.6 percent during the year. Jobs fell by 0.2 percent in Pinellas County for the study period. Hernando County wasn't large enough to be included in the report.

Lee County, home to Fort Myers, joined Pasco atop the national list with 9.3 percent job growth during the year.

Pasco's job growth may have outstripped the rest of the country, but local wage growth did not.

With a job base built on the low-paying service sector, Pasco's average wage of $7,519 for the second quarter of 2005 was up 2.7 percent during the year. While that was ahead of inflation, it fell short of the 3.9 percent average wage growth for the counties studied and earned Pasco a rank in the bottom 100 of the list, the report said.

Pasco's employment profile is consistent with its status as a bedroom community for its larger neighbors, said John Walsh, vice president of the Pasco Economic Development Council.

"I don't think a lot of the growth in the jobs that are being made here are going to affect that out-migration, especially if a lot of that growth has been in construction," Walsh said. "The people who are leaving aren't working in those sectors."

A recent report by the U.S. Census Bureau suggests some of Pasco's fastest growing areas, including Wesley Chapel and Land O' Lakes, are largely ghost towns between the morning and evening commutes.

Pasco sends more of its work force elsewhere, more than any other county in the Tampa area, the Census Bureau report said.

County officials are pushing builders to erect office and industrial space in hopes of keeping commuters closer to home. It's likely to be many years before those changes create the kind of high-paying jobs people commute for, Walsh said.

Several large employers have moved to Pasco in recent years, among them cash-register tape maker Eastern Ribbon & Roll Inc. and flight simulator builder Opinicus Corp. Those companies and others have promised to add hundreds of high-paying jobs to Pasco's payrolls, but the manufacturing job count has shown little movement.

Manufacturing grew by 22 jobs - about one-half of 1 percent - between June 2004 and June 2005.

Many of those expansion-minded manufacturers have run into construction-related delays, Walsh said. That means the jobs they have promised will begin showing up in future employment assessments, he said.

As the county revises its 20-year plan, it's doing so with an eye toward making space for employment amid the sea of residential growth.

"We're doing a lot of the groundwork now for things that will happen 10 to 15 years from now," Walsh said.

ON THE WEB

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' report on employment and wages in the second quarter of 2005 is available at www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cewqtr.pdf